DIVISION OF THE HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCES

CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

PASADENA, CALIFORNIA 91125
- -
THE PASTS OF A PALAIYAKARAR:
THE ETHNOHISTORY OF A SOUTH INDIAN LITTLE KING
Nicholas B. Dirks
California Institute of Technology
HUMANITIES WORKING PAPER 65
July 1981
ABSTRACT
This paper examines a text which is the family history of
a line of south Indian "little kings," or p;ilaiyak;irars. Beginning
with a discussion of different modes of history, I analyze this
text as both a statement of a particular history and a cultural
representation of a more general modality of history. As a
particular history, this text enables me to talk about conceptions of
royal appropriateness and sovereignty, of political relations, and of
kingly privileges; as a cultural form the text provides clues about
the relations of these cultural conceptions to a structural form of
narrative emplotment with all its underlying assumptions about
time, causation, and process. Finally, I consider how a
hermeneutical exercise of this sort is very important for Western
analysts who wish to reconstruct the "history" of south Indian politics.
THE PASTS OF A PALAIYAKARAR:
THE ETHNOHISTORY OF A SOUTH INDIAN LITTLE KING
Nicholas B. Dirks
California Institute of Technology
History and Ethnohistory
From the little attention given by the natives of India
to History, or tradition, historical subjects are
generally involved in dark obscurity or embellished with
unintelligible fables.
S.R. Lushington
Collector of Poligar Peshkash, Southern Pol lams,
December 24, 1800
That Hindu India has had a severely underdeveloped sense of
history is a commonplace assumption. Unfavorable contrasts are made
not only with the West but with that most historical of Asian
civilizations, China, as well as with the Islamic world. Traditional
Indian "historiography," when it is referred to at all, is most often
characterized as fabulous legend and religious myth, bearing no
relation to the past succession of real events. Not only is there
thought to be a paucity of chronicles which provide the political
historian with definite dynastic details and other such political
facts, there is no philosophy or philosopher of history to allow one
to so characterize an intellectual domain, let alone to compare with
something like Ibn Khaldun's sage and still much cited Mugaddimah.
But is it true that India has had, until such was introduced by the
British, no sense of history; and what does it mean that this
assumption has borne so little critical scrutiny?
Indeed, however caricatured the above portrayal, those who
have written Indian history over the last two hundred years have not
only remained unquestioning in their assurance that they are the first
historians, they have only recently begun to use any local and
indigenous sources at all. Often, this is because of a continued
acceptance of Lushington's view of Hindu history, a view which
dismisses local histories as interesting myths at best. Fortunately,
however, the preoccupation with caste in the study of India has also
meant that some caste and family histories have been collected for
scholarly purposes, and a number of recent studies have' forcefully
demonstrated the potential range of uses to which these sources can be
I
put. Unfortunately, most discussions of this kind of material have
viewed the "histories" only as social charters directed towards the
census, where the decennial designation of caste status became a major
focus of social mobility and contests over rank between 1870 and 1930.
While it is true that caste histories were written, published, and
submitted as petitions for census recognition, the study of caste
histories from this single perspective has obscured the persistence of
a cultural genre as well as the of this genre in a much
wider social and historical context. Among other things, the
so-called mythical components of these histories are considered in
such analyses as nothing more than rhetorical fictions generated for a
real political arena, rather than as important clues towards
understanding indigenous social and historical thought.
2
The consideration of indigenous histories is by no means
pursued only by those who are interested in discovering the structure
and content of indigenous "historical" thought, nor do I mean to
suggest that this is the only legitimate use of these histories. Jan
Vans ina has done brilliant work on oral traditions in Africa, and by
demonstrating the potential accuracy and usefulness of oral tradition
he has immeasurably broadened the scope of African historiography.3
And for Southeast Asian history, the importance of the hikayat, or the
traditional chronicle, has been increasingly accepted by scholars of
differing backgrounds, interests, and disciplinary persuasions.
4
But
the exogenously conceived classification of hikayat into "histories"
and "romances" exemplifies the common assumption that Western notions
about history should be used exclusively to define the domain of
historical thought.
S
Writing about Sumatra, James Siegal has noted
that early Dutch historical writing was characterized by a special
vigor deriving from the belief on the part of the Dutch scholars that
they were "establishing a realm of 'fact' in the face of a tradition
which seemed practically to lack it or at best to accord it with
little importance.,,6 And, as Shelly Errington has pointed out, even
in more recent and far more sophisticated scholarship, the central
intent behind the treatment of indigenous texts has continued to be
much the same, even if the realm of fact has been allowed to expand in
more recent studies.
7
Both Errington and Siegal make the point that underlies my
approach here: indigenous texts and traditions which concern the
3
"past" must be classified and analyzed in terms and categories which
are consonant with the particular modes of "historical" understanding
which are appropriate, indeed posited by, the texts and traditions
themselves. When this is not done, what usually results is the denial
of the possibility that there is a legitimate and integral historical
sensibility expressed in the texts, and more concretely, the
distortion of the intended meanings of the texts. As Errington says
about the question ot the relation of the past and the hikayat:
8
The form in which that question is posed intrudes into
any possible direct answer, for when those with a
historical consciousness ask such a question, we imagine
'the past' as a structured and sequential whole. If
hikayat in general had a relationship to the past, thus
conceived, then we would expect that the genre hikayat
would present us with a consistent 'way of viewing the
past.' Such is not the case.
Errington's critique is made even more searching by contrasting the
structure of time, the organization and evaluation of past events, and
the status and meaning of language in the post-Renaissance political
rhetoric of the West with those in the Malay hikayat. But the most
important consequence of this kind of critique is that it frees us to
examine any given text in its own terms before we ask (or simply
classify) in what sense it is or is not "historical."
The way in which this problem has usually been treated has
been to distinguish between history, which is how we in the West
understand the past, and myth, which is how "primitives" understand
it. In disciplinary terms, historians have been those who set out to
"discover" the past of these areas where there was no prior history,
using fragmentary records from fossils to inscriptions ~ o establish an
4
actual chronological record of past events, empirical if sometimes
meagre. Anthropologists have collected myths, native legends which
are seen as a vital superstructural component of a synchronic social
structure. It has been years, of course, since the full strength of
this disciplinary caricature has given way, but in genealogical terms
it does explain why historians and anthropologists have often talked
past each other, the concerns of the one analyzing myths irrelevant to
the other translating epigraphy or ruminating over remains. And,
while historians and anthropologists now share many of the same
sources and concerns about the nature of social structure in a
diachronic dimension, there is still a fairly sharp demarcation
between those who study myth and those who study history.
As we see this demarcation fade,9 however, the irony is of
course that we are only now coming to realize what the ancient Greeks
took for granted: that history by itself is simply speech about the
particular. but that this record of particulars has no meaning or form
until it is "configured" in some narrative (or theoretical) structure,
a structure which for the Greeks was, appropriately enough, epic
10
poetry and tragedy. Without myth, that is, such configurement would
have been impossible. Indeed, and prior to the question of narrative
configurement. myth worked to select the very particulars which would
be configured. As M. I. Finley remarks:
ll
The atmosphere in which the Fathers of History set to
work was saturated with myth. Without myth, indeed, they
could never have begun their work. The past is an
intractable. incomprehensible mass of uncounted and
uncountable data. It can be rendered intelligible only
if some selection is made, around some focus or foci. In
all the endless debate that has been generated by Ranke's
5
wie es eigentlich gewesen ("how things really were"). a
first question is often neglected: what "things" merit or
require consideration in order to establish how they
"really were"? Long before anyone dreamed of history,
myth gave an answer. That was its function, or rather
one of its functions; to make the past intelligible and
meaningful by selection, by focussing on a few bits of
the past which thereby acquired permanence, relevance,
universal significance.
Thus myth did not simply record the past, it created it.
If, then, myth is simply another historiographic possibility,
a distinctive way of establishing sequence and relevance in the
understanding and representation of the past, the separate analytic
treatment of myth and history becomes somewhat more problematic.
Anthropologists must realize both that myths have histories, and that
they are histories. Historians must accept, as Bernard Cohn has
written. that they must read texts and codified oral traditions not
simply "to establish chronologies, or to sift historical fact from
mythic fancy, but to try to grasp the meanings of the forms and
contents of these texts in their own cultural terms .,,12
Indeed, in this paper I intend to read and explicate the
family history (yamcavali) of one south Indian little king
(palaiyakarar) in such a way so as not simply to report what is said
about the past but to analyze in what sense the past exists for the
text. Taking seriously Finley's comment that the function of myth is
"to make the past intelligible and meaningful by selection, by
focussing on a few bits of the past which thereby acquired permanence,
relevance, and universal significance," I shall reconstruct the sets
of relevant events selected for narrative emplotment, and establish
how these events are talked about, the key symbols through which they
6
are expressed, and move on from here to the significance of these
patterns ot selection for the general structure of historical
representation. While in this paper I will concentrate on only one
text, the method that I seek to employ here is one which ultimately
must be used with a great many texts in an attempt to identify and
delLneate an entire ideological discourse (as well as, if they exist,
salient differences within this discourse and the extent to which
these differences might be correlated with levels of political
authority, or with caste, class, region, or other such factors). This
historiographical problematic has recently been well stated, and
elegantly undertaken, by William Sewell, who wrote at the beginning of
his work: "The key problem thus becomes not the delineation of the
thought of a series of authors [as is the problem in much intellectual
history, Sewell has told us before] but the reconstruction of
discourse out of fragmentary sources."
l3
Finally, although this
agenda would take us far beyond the scope of this paper, I wish not
merely to show how this text created a past for certain Tamilians of
the eighteenth century, but at least to suggest how it might enable us
-- the external others better to create and configure our own
analytic consideration of their past, to help us select relevant
events and then to interpret these events in our reconstruction of
kingship and the nature of local level political authority in the
little kingdoms of Tamil Natu. It is at this latter point that I
intend to use this ethnohistory to shape my own historical
investigation.
7
However, it is at this last point -- enter my own history --
that I will also introduce perspectives and ask questions which do not
derive from the text itself. One of the consequences of this analytic
intervention is that I suggest interpretations which, in the form as I
have put them, would not occur to participants. This is of course the
sense in which cultural analysis creates an episteme which is
different from the episteme of the cultural form itself, and although
this shift is always problematic, it is not only necessary, but
inevitable. But we must try continually to remind ourselves of our
intrusion. Indeed, ethnohistorical investigation must operate at the
interstices of these interdependent agendas, or epistemes, and, with
the hope that the former agenda will constantly check the latter, I
14
shall proceed to the text.
The Ethnohistorical Text. and Context
The text which I have chosen for analysis here is one of many
family histories written by or for south Indian little kings, or
palaiyakarars. Palaiyakarars of the southern Tamil country. about
whom I write here, ruled over literally armed camps, but in
fact small kingdoms ranging in size from three villages to almost two
thousand square miles. Palaiyakarars seem to have emerged as the most
important loci of locality rule in the period of south Indian history
following the collapse of the great Cola empire in the thirteenth
century. The descendents of local chieftains Caraiyars) who exchanged
protection and munif icent donorship for shares of village production
and the position and perquisites of local leadership, the
8
were most conspicuously successful in the dryer regions
of southern India, particularly in the dry-land belts of the
Coimbatore, Dindigul, Tirunelveli. Ramnad, Maturai, and Putukkottai
areas. The dissolution of the central political order with the demise
of Vijayanagara in the early seventeenth century and the subsequent
collapse of the regional Nayaka rulers in the early eighteenth century
meant at the same time that the smaller units in the political system,
those at the symbolic as well as the ecological periphery, took on new
importance in those two centuries. While some of the little kingdoms
in important political areas were absorbed by new states such as
Mysore (both the and later Haidar Ali and Tipu Sultan) and
later the Nawab of Arcot, the little kingdoms of the areas mentioned
above gained strength by consolidating their caste and territorial
loyalties and ties and asserting their not inconsiderable military
prowess in selected engagements, sometimes among themselves, but also
against or on behalf of some of the major contestants for political
hegemony in the southern area. The little kingdoms never totally
closed in upon themselves, however, as they both maintained ties with
each other and continued to seek protection and even overlordship from
some more powerful king. In examining the text before us we will note
the persistence of an orientation "upward" in the political universe,
even as in examining the mechanisms of these local political systems I
have also observed the persistence of local relations predicated on
caste, lineage, service, worship, the sharing of rights to land and
other agrarian resources, as well as the distribution of honors which
had their immediate origin in the sovereignty of the little kings
9
themselves ,IS
The text to be examined here is one of a number of vamcavalis,
genealogies, literally meaning the path, or road, of a family
These vamcavalis concern the families of the little kings, the
and every palaiyakarar family I have come across has at
least one vamcavali. The are genealogies both in that they
list the entire line of the family, and in tbat genealogy acts as the
principal movement and the narrative frame, or mode of emplotment.
What chronology is to narrative history in the West, genealogy is in
the vamcavali: it establishes sequence, relevance, and structure. It
also establishes the purpose of the vamciiva!i, which is specifically
to narrate the origins of the present palaiyak8rar and his family.
The events which are related about his origins and past are those
which are considered to be necessary to establish the present and
which are desired to be put forward as the record of the past. For,
it is this past which constitutes the heritage of the king and his
family.
All of the vamcavalis which I have used, the present one
included, were collected in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth
century under the direction of Colonel Colin Mackenzie. Mackenzie.
who was both a distinguished military officer and engineer. did work
in surveying and map making which led to a succession of posts
culminating in his being named Surveyer General of India in 1810. His
work also led to extensive contacts with the Indian countryside.
during which he became very interested in the "Antiquities. the
History and the Institutions of the South of India.,,16 Over the years
10
Mackenzie conducted surveys in the Nizam's dominions, in Guntur,
Mysore, the Ceded Districts, and other parts of Madras, and as a
regular part of his surveys he and his "establishment" collected local
histories ot kingly dynasties, chiefly families, castes, villages,
temples, religious monasteries, .as well as other local traditions and
religious and philosophical texts in Sanskrit, Persian and Arabic,
Tamil, Telegu, Kanarese, Malayalam, and Hindi.
Mackenzie was an avid collector and, as his close friend Sir
Alex Johnston wrote, was "diffident of sending anything forth to the
world whilst there seemed to be any part of the subject susceptible of
more complete elucidation. He was therefore chiefly employed in
collecting materials for future work. .,,17 Mackenzie did intend
to prepare a Catelogue Raisonee, but for the reasons Johnston cited
never got around to it. This is highly unfortunate as we know far
less than we would like about all the circumstances surrounding the
collection of the materials. Information regarding the manuscript
collections is scant and unsystematic when it is available at all, but
some insights can be garnered from the "Letters and Reports from
Native Agents Employed to Collect Books, Traditions, etc., in the
Various Parts of the Peninsula," which covered the years from 1803 to
1821.
18
These records suggest that while the process of collecting
information involved the use of information to exert influence, with
the ultimate wish of many informants being employment in the service
of Mackenzie, many of the traditions transcribed by Mackenzie's men
were authentic.
11
The real historiographical question. of course, is which
manuscripts were simply collected and which were produced. It is
sometimes fairly easy to distinguish; for example. one manuscript was
entitled. "Depositions of the Bramins of Srirangam and Trichinapali on
19
the subject of the ancient history of that country." Another
account. "The Raja Cheritram of the Ancient Rajahs of Dutchana
Dickam," however much it might be based on a traditional manuscript,
refers to the "lies" made up by Rama to justify the importance of
Ramesvarem, and thus underwent uncertain accretion at the very
least.
20
Other texts which were translated by some of Nackenzie's
assistants and now are bound and preserved in London are self-
evidently even more problematic. 'For example, "Mootiah's
Chronological and Historical Account of the Modern Kings of Madura,"
21
begins with the following preface:
I turned my thoughts towards the Chronological and
Historical Accounts of the Gentoo kings of } ~ d u r a written
upon Palmyra leaves in a vulgar style of the Tamil
language which I found to be satisfactory but the same
being in a confused order and full of tautologies and
repetitions which. if I proceed to translate literally
into the English, it would prove absurd in the sight of
the learned. I have therefore. in my following version of
the said account. omitted the tautological and repeated
expressions and set aside prolixity but following
laconism. digested the Chronicles into eleven chapters
and a preamble prefixed thereto, to which I added the
characters of the Madurean kings as I learnt from the
above learned Mendicant.
It takes little imagination to realize the consequences of this kind
of tampering for a cultural analysis of the form of a text, let alone
its content.
12
Clearly. the texts which were simply collected are the most
useful of the Mackenzie collection. Fortunately. the vamcavalis seem
.
to have been composed well before Mackenzie and his men came around
searching for historical documents, though many of them were added on
to at the end and seem in their new forms to be in part petitions to
the East India Company for favorable consideration, the concern often
that the palaiyam be permanently settled as a zamindari estate, or
that the peshkash (tribute) be reduced, or in some cases even that the
descendent of the kingly line be released from prison, where he had
been put after participating in the palaiyakarar wars of the late
eighteenth century. The vamcavali to be examined here shows clear
traces of tampering in the last paragraph, but the earlier parts of
the text were certainly not composed with the British in mind.
The Family History of the Uttumalai Palaiyapattu
The palaiyakarars of Uttumalai were of the Maravar caste. The
Maravars were concentrated in the Ramnad area, both in the
Ramanatapuram and Civakankai estates and in the southern part of
PutukkOttai state, and in the western belt of Tirunelveli district,
which stretched out along the foothills of the Western Ghats in dry
but fertile red soil areas. Uttumalai was the largest both in
population and area of the Maravar zamindaries in Tirunelveli when
boundaries were drawn in the early nineteenth century. In 1823 its
total population was 14,612 and its area was about one hundred and
h
"1 22
twenty-t ree square m ~ es. Adjacent on its northwestern side to the
Cokkampatti Zamindary, the second largest of the Maravar estates, it
13
was located only about ten miles to the east of Tenkaci. a town
important historically because it was the seat of rule in its
last phase, after Cola rule, during the thirteenth and fourteenth
centuries.
This is the longest of the vamcavalis I have read, and in many
respects the most interesting. For example, traditions relating to
both the Tamil bhakti groups of saints, the Vaisnavite Alvars and the
Saivite are extensively incorporated in the early portions
of the text. This text also has one of the most clearly developed
narrative structures of any of the vamcavalis. For the convenience of
the reader, since there are not only no paragraphs but no sentences in
the original Tamil, I have paragraphed the text in accordance with its
episodic structure. This structure is genealogical. The texts, after
all, are family-cum-dynastic histories that inscribe succession to the
throne and title of the little kingdom. The vamcavali does not
concern the wider family except when events concerning the king draw
them in. My justification for my paragraphing is that the principal
episodes of the text are circumscribed by lists of succession. lists
which often give names of kings of quite a number of generations
before relating the next narrative episode. My breaks thus come
always at the point when a transition from one story to the next is
marked by such a successional list. I have otherwise translated the
entire text as it was copied from the original palm leaf manuscript
which remains in Madras.
23
14
Uttumalai Vamcavali
The little kings of Uttumalai are of the
Ma!avar caste. In ancient days, the king of the country,
having no sons, performed penance and great austerities, and
worshipped the goddess Parvati; he further resolved to proceed on a
Digvijayam (conquest of the quarters) to display his valor. For this
he needed a small army. Parvati appeared before him, and from her
right side emerged an army. Because of her excellence the soldiers
were born with great strength and bravery, and they went immediately
to perform service for the king. Because they were born from the side
of Parvati, she gave this caste the title: Tevar (God). Having
created and then named them, the Goddess organized the army and they
set out for the Digvijayam, in which they achieved great victory.
A descendent of this great Ma!avar caste was King
..
was off in the forest hunting with his clan but, as at one
point he went off alone, he became lost. He continued, however, to
hunt alone. Roaming about, he came upon a temple of Siva. was
thereupon overcome by the serene beauty of the idol and of the sacred
place, and he then and there dedicated himself to the worship of the
idol. He went out and killed animals which provided tender meat,
cooked the meat in fire, and tasted each piece before offering it to
the god. He chose only those tender morsels that were properly
cooked. For his offerings, this Ma!avar king carried the pre-tasted
meat in his hands, the water for the ritual unction in his mouth, and
the garlands of flowers and the vermillion in his hair. He approached
the idol and removed the flowers and other offerings with the help of
15
his feet and slippers, washed the idol with the water that he carried
in his mouth, adorned the god with the flowers from his hair, and
finally offered the cooked meat pieces that he had already tasted and
judged to be fine. The priest of the temple noticed that someone had
been coming to the temple everyday, and, after removing the flowers
the priest had placed there, had polluted the temple with common
flowers, meat, etc. The priest became very upset. but one day in his
dream Lord Siva appeared to him and told him about King and his
complete devotion and told the priest to hide and observe this for
himself. Siva added that he would put Tinnan's devotion (bhakti) and
.. - ---
determination to the test. The next morning the priest came and
performed worship (puja) and then hid himself nearby. Shortly
thereafter came and performed his own worship and proceeded to
pray to Siva. As he was praying, blood began to ooze from one eye of
the idol. saw this and offered his own eye to the deity; when
he took out his eye and placed it on the idol's eye the bleeding
stopped. Then the other eye of the idol started to bleed. Seeing
this, felt that he must offer his second eye, as that alone
would be the proper remedy. In order to locate the bleeding eye after
completely blinding himself, he placed his foot (on which he still
wore his slippers) on the idol's eye and removed his second eye and
placed it on the idol. At this moment Siva appeared and embraced
and blessed him with the name "He who applied his
own eye." With this blessing, attained release.
Yet another descendent of the Ma!avar clan was named
He desired to perform Tiruppani (the giving of gifts to and the
16
renovation of a temple) to the srIrankam temple. Kaliyan spent all
the money from his treasury and prepared the offerings. These
offerings suddenly disappeared, as a result of which sold his
kingdom and, still short of money, resorted to highway robbery with
his father-in-law and his brothers-in-law. When they collected
sufficient treasure by this means, they were able to perform the
Tiruppani. They went on worshipping SrI Renkanatar Cuvami (a form of
.
Visnu) of SrIrankam, but the source of income continued to be highway
robbery. They then stole a golden image of the Buddha hidden in a
cave in Nagapattinam. When it became increasingly difficult to rob
..
they prayed to SrI Renkanatar to help them. Then they went out on yet
another mission. SrI Renkanatar himself dressed in fineries, adorned
himself with many valuable jewels, and mounted a horse and came near
them. When they attacked the Lord he pretended to be overpowered by
them and allowed himself to be robbed of everything he had including
the horse on which he rode. But one ornament on SrI Renkanatar's foot
could not be removed. So, used his teeth to try and pry it
\
off. As soon as tongue touched Renkanatar's foot he
realized who he was and began to pray and sang a hymn of praise to the
deity. Having revealed himself, Renkanatar blessed with the
name Kalla Mankai Alvar. and thus he became a saint
..
Descendents of this Ma!avar clan, who were our ancestors, were
living in Kottai. In those days, a band of highway
robbers were terrorizing the nearby countryside. At this, our
ancestor Marutappattevar went to this area and overpowered the
Kallars. On hearing this, the Raja summoned Marutappattevar.
17
congratulated him, and told him: "Thanks to you the people are happy
now. As you are responsible for their well-being today, we shall
grant you the country as your domain
So saying, the Raja bestowed upon him the title Vijayakunarama
Pantiya Marutappattevar and gave him a pair of fly whisks, a flag with
the emblem of a tiger, the symbol of the Co;as, a flag with the emblem
of a fish, the symbol of the and a flag of Indra (King of
the Gods), and sent him off to Tirucci, where he ruled his domain.
His son was Maninatamarutappattevar; his son was
.
Cuvarkakamarutappattevarj his son was Pantiya Marutappattevarj his son
..
was MInaksicuntaramarutappattevarj his son was Kuvanamarutapattevarj
. .
his son was Jayappirutapamarutappattevarj and in this way ten
generations ruled the domain.
During Jayappirutapamarutappattevar's reign in
there was a very beautiful girl. Pilgrims who passed through said
that this girl was fit to be the wife of a great king. Hearing this,
a few kings asked for her hand in marriage, but all of these offers
were refused. As a result, wars were waged, these kings were
defeated, their elephants, horses, weapons, titles, and crowns were
seized, and they were driven away. After this, the King
asked for the girl's hand in marriage. The reply came as follows:
"You are of the solar race; and therefore you cannot marry our Ma!avar
girl. The fates of other kings who have made such an offer are well
known. If you do not know this, you can see that we have
captured their weapons and keep them on the outskirts of our country,
their crowns are being looked after, and their possessions are used as
18
borders in decorating the roofs of our houses. Further, their
tUllbrellas are folded and kept aside. Do you really hope to get a girl
from such a Ma!avar family for the royal wedding?" When this reply
was conveyed to the King, he became very angry and a war
..
ensued. Finally, proceeded towards the
north and settled there.
At that time in Kotakai Natu. the place where he settled.
those who traveled the highways were being troubled by a group of
people who lived in the forest where they could not be
overpowered. The Ma!avar King collected a small army and succeeded in
overpowering them and putting an end to the trouble. When the royal
court came to know about this they were very happy and invited him to
court. He was given a howdah (saddle for elephant), a pair of fly
whisks, a five-colored shawl, a banner with the emblem of and
another with the emblem of the Brahminy kite, and was given
as his own domain. and he was given the title:
Kotakai Cekari Marutappattevar; and he was sent off.
After ruling over his domain, he was succeeded by his son,
Marutappattevar, who in turn was succeeded by
whose son was Kotakaimarutappattevar. whose
.
son was Venkalamarutappattevar, who, being without issue, prayed to
and worshipped Venkatajalapati of Tiruppati. By his blessing, a son
.
was born to him, and he was given the name Tiruvenkatana
tamarutappattevar.
During the reign of his son, Marutappattevar, he left
Cuntararajapu!am for the southern country. and on the way was attacked
19
by some whom he killed. Hearing of this, the
King of invited Marutappattevar to court. Accepting
the invitation, Marutappattevar went to via
Raja welcomed him and said, "We have
heard of your bravery and success, In our country there are many
Ku!umpars who are troublesome. If you can subdue them, I shall give
you that country as your domain." At this, Marutappattevar fought
with the Kurumpars and after a heavy loss of life on both sides
Marutappattevar defeated them. Hearing this,
accorded him great honor and gave him many gifts, and gave him the
KUEumpar's country as his domain -- a place called Uttumalai. And
since Marutappattevar came from the north and settled in the south, as
requested by the Raja, he was given the name,
Marutappattevar. Accordingly, he built a fort
and cleared the jungle and ruled over the place. His son was
Marutappattevarj his son was Venkalamarutappattevarj his son was
Palapattiramarutappattevarj his son was his
son was Corhanamarutappattevar.
At this time, went to see SrI Vallapa
at the time of the annual Navarattiri Kolu festival. SrI
Vallapa Maharaja's Navarattiri Kolu was famous for the various types
of agonistic contests arranged for each day; e.g. wrestling, ram
fights, horse fights, wild boar fights, and bull fights. One day two
intoxicated elephants were brought and were let loose to fight. But
one elephant ran amuck and escaped from the arena and threatened the
lives of many who had come for the festival, and no one was able to
20
tame the elephant. Hearing this, the Maravar King came outside and
went to confront the beast. He caught hold of the elephant's tail and
twisted it until the animal was tamed. Then the mahout came and took
the animal away. The Maharaja was very pleased, and mounted him on
the same tamed elephant which was duly decorated with many emblems,
flags, and banners, including the howdah, a pair of fly whisks, the
five colored shawl. the tiger flag, and he was sent off to the
accompaniment of drums and musical instruments. after having been
given the title: Kamukamatakki Pitavallamara Corhana
(he who caught and subdued the royal elephant).
His son was his son was

During this period the Karttakkals (the Nayakars) of Maturai
summoned all the palaiyakarars regarding the protection of the fort.
Marutappattevar appointed his men for the protection of the fort and
went south where he engaged in the protection of a large area, and he
was given many presents as well. Marutappattevar's son was
whose son was
He established a Brahman settlement (akkirakaram) in
which he called Camuttiram, and for
this akkirakaram he consecrated the Perumal Temple. His son was SrI
.
Vallapa and his son was NavanItakkirusna
Marutappattevar; and his son was SrI Vallapa
In those days the Karttakkals established an akkirakaram in
the southern country. Some criminals came and set fire to the
akkirakaram and destroyed it. The Karttakkals, wishing to avenge this
21
terrible act, commanded SrI Vallapa Marutappattevar to apprehend the
criminals. Accordingly, he did so, capturing sixty-four prisoners,
though in the fight he lost many men. Because of this he was honored
(apimanam) and was given gifts of land on half-assessment and was
given a palanquin, banners with the emblems of H a n u m a ~ and the
Brahminy kite, a copper umbrella, some musical instruments, a tiger
skin, and a horse. These sixty-four criminals were taken to the
akkirakaram where they committed their crime and one by one their
heads were severed. SrI Vallapa's son was Pucai Marutappattevar; and
his son was SrI Vallapa Marutappattevar; his son was Velattiri
Marutappattevar; and his son was NavanIta Marutappattevar.
In his day Tirunelveli was without a ruler and the Navapu
Caypu (Nawab of Arcot) sent his son, Makammatu Yicumukan (Muhammed
Yusuf Khan) to look into affairs and take control. He took the help
of NavanItakirusna Marutappattevar and brought under control those who
..
were causing trouble, those who were not submissive (kIlppa;intu
natavamal), and those who were not paying their tribute. Makammatu
Yicumukan also used the help of NavanItakirusna to punish Nelakkattum
Cevval; and for all this he was very pleased and he presented the
MaEavar with a howdah, camels, a tampur drum, a flute, silver sticks,
an ornamental container for sandalwood paste, and two flags.
At that time in Tirunelveli there was anarchy and Makammatu
Turai called NavanItakirusna Marutappattevar and gave him two thousand
men and told him to bring order in the area. Achieving this, NavanIta
met Makammatu Turai and was told that he should be careful in the work
of the Palace and that he should do what he is told. At this time
22
RajasrI Colonel Maxwell came down to the southern country
and called a meeting of all the and laid down our
duties. When some were late in paying their taxes, one
of our men was engaged to undertake these collections. He was honored
with the gift of a palanquin and a horse and waS treated well. To
this day we follow the instructions of the honorable London Gentlemen
(Maharaja Raja SrI Turai) and we protect the area from Tonti to
Xttur, for which we were honored by the gift of a green umbrella. On
behalf of the honorable Company we have fought against
and with our armies; we have severed the heads of bulls
belonging to our neighboring enemies and thus shown our loyalty to the
Company. For this the Company presented us with a horse. In this way
my actions have brought favor to the Company. I have shown obedience
and worshipful respect in the Company's work, for which I pray for
their honorable respect and favor.
Signed: Uttumalai Marutappa Tevar.
Exegesis
Taking the text as a whole, it is clear that the central
action of all but the first three episodes is the giving of gifts by
the great kings to the little kings. The narrative selects what we
need to know to understand these exchanges: what the
does to merit the attention of the king, and what the king gives him
in appreciation and recognition of his merit. This centrality is
actually clearer in some of the other vamcava!is than in this text,
which is made more complicated by the inclusion of puranic material.
23
Indeed, in this text we encounter a narrative frame which traces a
series ot transformations in the kingly line. such that the Uttumalai
Maravars who begin as devout but unlettered saints of the forest end
up as cultured kings who not only have become aware of but have
extensively endowed the persons and institutions of Sanskritic
culture.
The first paragraph relates the creation/generation of the
Uttumalai kingly family (vamcam). Interestingly. the first cause of
creation rests in a theme which occurs often in the vamcavalis.
namely, the failure to have male progeny and thus the potential crisis
of succession. a crisis which is both personal and political. The
Maravar clan (kulam) is thus created in connection with two integrally
linked events: first, the worship of Parvati. and second, the decision
of the king to go on a Digvijayam (conquest of the quarters).
both actions embarked upon for the purpose of having a son. An army
is needed for the Digvijayam, and to fulfill this need Parvati appears
before the king and from her right side emerges an army. These
soldiers are the Maravars, born of divine substance, born of cakti
(the goddess, and the female principle of power), born of the right
side. Because of the nature of their origin, Parvati calls the
Ma!avars Gods, Teyars. As we shall see, naming constitutes an
important part of the structure of exchange; one must be given names
by a superior, unless one is a god or a universal king. The first
action of these Tevars is to go and perform service this word
also means to be humble, submissive. and to worship) to the king. In
these few lines, therefore, the relational axes which will determine
24
subsequent action in the narrative are established; the Ma!avars begin
with established, indeed parental, relations with a deity and with a
king and from the beginning these relations are profoundly
interdependent, the creation of the Tevars by the deity being for the
service of the king.
The Ma!avars have always had the reputation of being a fierce
group with great military prowess, a reputation that lived on in an
unfortunate sense with the British who classified them as a "martial
caste." Two passages from the ancient Tamil poem group, the
Kalittokai. depict the Ma!avars of old:
24
the wrathful and furious Maravar. whose curled beards
resemble the twisted horns of the stag, the loud twang of
whose powerful bowstrings, and the stirring sound of
whose double-headed drums, compel even kings at the head
of large armies to turn their back and fly.
Kalittokai xv 1-7
Of strong limbs and hardy frames and fierce-looking as
tigers, wearing long and curled locks of hair, the
blood-thirsty Maravar, armed with the bow bound with
leather, ever ready to injure others, shoot their arrows
at poor and helpless travellers, from whom they can rob
nothing, only to feast their eyes on the quivering limbs
of their victims.
Kalittokai IV 1-5
Thus the Ma!avars were represented both as fierce soldiers and
merciless highway robbers as early as the first few centuries of the
Christian era. Their reputation, while somewhat diminished by the
passage of time and disappearance of Cankam rhetorical flourish, was
not unnoticed, and not uninterpreted, by the British. Indeed,
throughout the century the were seen as positively
25
dangerous to the rural social order, and some groups of Maravars were
classified as criminal tribes or castes. In a letter dated 15 July
1824 written to the Collector of Tinnevelly District, the British
25
Judge of that district noted that the Ma!avars are:
at best a lawless people, and robbers by
profession. Almost in every part of the District
you see this caste; idling about, and they can give no
satisfactory explanation as to their means of livelihood;
they represent themselves as the adherents of the
Chokkamputty zamindar or other neighboring ones of the
same caste, these persons are generally very well dressed
though they receive no pay. The conclusion therefore,
must be, that they live by unlawful means, under the
cloak of being the Zemindar's followers, and Guards of
the Estates.
This, of course, betrays a hyperbolic rhetorical mode equal to that of
the Cankam poems, and yet the point to be made here is that the
Ma!avars were invested with a particular reputation, one of which they
were proud and yet which caused certain classificational problems. In
the face of British classificational notions, they had to worry about
being branded as a "criminal tribe," and in historical and cultural
terms, they had to establish a legitimate claim to kingly status.
As noted earlier, the Ma!avars settled throughout southern
India in areas that were, usually, at best only partially irrigated by
small rivers, often nonperennial, and tanks, which they built and
maintained with great skill and ingenuity. While they usually settled
in groups headed by a palaiyakarar and attained local dominance, this
dominance was over areas which were productively and culturally
inferior to the riverine and deltaic areas where Vellalars, the
highest of the Sudra castes and the group most typically associated
26
with settled agriculture, and Brahmans were dominant. It might not be
far fetched to conclude that one of the reasons why the Ma!avars were
said to/have been born out of the right side of Parvati was to
associate them with the right handed castes, which were usually
associated in turn with landedness and rural dominance.
26
The
reputation of the Ma!avars. while combined with their prestigious
position as local chiefs and protectors (kavalkarars), did set them
apart from more peaceful and sedentary cultivating groups who had more
direct relations with the kings of the great south Indian dynasties
and with the institutions of the great tradition, specifically the
great temples and brahman settlements which were royally endowed.
Given this background, it is perhaps less surprising that the
story of Kannapan, nee Tinnan, is incorporated into the vamcavali, for
.. - .. -
there seems to be a marked discontinuity between the royal Tevar
soldiers of the first episode and the uncultivated hunters of the
second. The story of is well known throughout Tamil Natu, as
it is one of the most popular of the legends in the the
twelfth century Tamil puranic epic which tells the stories of the
lives of the sixty-three Saivite bhakti saints. The story is
adapted here without major alteration, though the version is much
shortened and as colloquial as the rest of the vamcavali. No caste i,s
ascribed to in the periyapuranam. but it is clear that he is
the chief of a tribe of hunters who live somewhere in the remote
forests ot the hills. In the vamcavali, of course, is the
chief of the great Ma!avar family, in what seems a self-conscious
acceptance of the usual assumption that the Ma!avars were originally a
27
hunting and gathering group which did not occupy the mainstream areas
of early Tamil civilization. In the story, T i ~ ~ a ~ becomes separated
from his group when on a hunting expedition, and as he roams about on
his own he comes across a temple dedicated to Civa. It then becomes
clearly apparent in the text that while T i n n a ~ is a man of great
devotion, who recognizes the sacred significance of this shrine to
eiva, he is totally ignorant of the agamic (textual) forms of worship
(puja).
Indeed, the detailed description of T i ~ ~ a ~ ' s worship
establishes an explicit set of oppositions. T i n n a ~ ' s actions are
consistent with a hunter's mentality and are specifically opposed to
agamic prescriptions for puja. Puja involves the honoring of the
deity by the offering of garlands of flowers, clothing, hymns and
mantras, as well as other sanctified things or actions, and perhaps
most importantly by the offer of some kind of food, often uncooked
items such as plantains and cocoanuts but also cooked food such as
sweet rice prepared by Brahmans, to the deity. As put by Inden,27
puja consists fundamentally in attending "to the bodily needs of a
deity placed in an enlivened image or emblem -- bathing, oiling,
dressing, fanning, perfuming, waving lights, doing obeisance, holding
an umbrella and making offerings of food to the deity [in short]
the rendering of hospitality or service to the deity." The highlight
of puja is the feeding of the god and then the return of some portion
of that which was used in worship as pracatam (in Tamil, piracatam).
which means transvalued substance; this pracatam most typically
consists of the leavings (ucchista) of the food which was first tasted
28
by the deity and then returned to the devotees for their consumption
and thus ritual incorporation. lnden notes that other privileges
concerning "physical contact" were also part of the completion of
puja.
28
Complicated procedures for puja, particularly in temples, but
also in domestic shrines, were codified in the agamas, texts which,
composed from the s1xth century on, became in procedural terms as
important for the conduct of puja as the Vedas had been for the
sacrifice, though the Vedas were still considered important and Vedic
mantras (sounds, chants, verses) still played a major role in puja
itself.
The usual order for the conduct ot puja in a temple would
consist of, tirst, the apicekam, or the unction/bath of the deity with
consecrated water (tIrttam). second, the adornment (alankaram) of the
deity with flowers (tirupukal), vermillion (kunkum), and perhaps
sandalwood paste (canta'na) and certain investments -- the number and
actual composition of the rites of adoration (upacaram) are somewhat
variable -- and finally, and invariably, the deity would be presented
with food. All of these presentations honor the deity; and all of the
substances presented to the deity are transvalued by their contact
with the deity. We can now realize that T i ~ ~ a ~ performs his worship
in exact contravention of the actions and principles underlying puja.
For his offerings (nivetanam) he carries the water for the ritual
unct10n in his mouth, which of course means that the water becomes
thoroughly mixed with his saliva (eccil); he carries the garlands of
flowers in his hair, which is defiling to the deity who will be
adorned with these flowers; worse, given the explicit body imagery
29
which casts the feet as the lowest and most polluting part of the
body, he touches all of his offerings with his feet and his slippers;
and worst of all, not only does he give meat to the deity, he tastes
it first to find the tastiest morsels. In short, T i ~ ~ a ~ not only
debases the diety, he structurally reverses the puja, performing
actions which make it seem as if the deity is worshipping him.
This story comes from the tradition of bhakti, and T i n n a ~ ' s
actions, far from intending such debasement and insult, are based on
his devotion, which in the end turns out to be pure and extreme. The
image is clearly imprinted at the end of the episode; while T i n n a ~ ' s
feet (with, as the text insists, his slippers still on) rest on the
head or the deity, a picture which not only would revolt the proper
Hindu but which represents the reversal of the rite of Tirupitam (the
worsnip ot the feet of the deity), he is about to pluck out his second
eye because of his intense love of god. Indeed, the major attention
to detail in the episode as it is related in the vamcivali concerns
Tinnan's thorough violation of puja, a violation which in the end is
.. -
only balanced by the complete sacrifice. So, although the tale seems
to come from the mainstream of Tamil bhakti, where devotion is seen to
be far more important than ritual, it might be noted that however much
ritual appears to be undervalued, the extreme degree of devotion
demanded does not so much dispense with ritual as it does demonstrate
its importance. Certainly, there would be little power in this story
if the reader were not convinced of the value and truth of puja
ritual. In this variant of bhakti ritual is not denounced and
del1berately defied as it was in Virasaiva, for example.
29
Rather, we
30
see here the use of bhakti's stress on devotion to compensate for the
lack of agamic expertise, and, in a corollary sense, the use of this
tradition to explain the incorporation of new groups into the
irtcreasingly heterogeneous fold of the Hindu community.
Indeed, not only does the incorporation of an episode from the
Periyapuranam in a local vamcavali suggest that the Uttumalai
palaiyakarars seek to lend weight to their family's past by including
a legend from one or the great Tamil puranas, but the use of this
particular episode at this point in the narrative frame suggests as
weil that the purpose or the tale is to explain how a family which was
once a tribal group of hunters and gatherers came to be associated
wLth, and become appropriate for, the worship of eiva and the
traditions of kingship. Birth from Parvati might seem enough, but it
is not. The set or transformations which contribute to this basic
development will be seen to orient the narrative format of the entire
text. But, in the progression from episode to episode there is less
the sequential development of an historical relationship than there is
a structurally ordered accumulation of differently contextua1ized
relationships which establish this fundamental transformation.
Episodes, like my themes, must therefore be seen always in relation.
The interrelation of episodes is only apparent after some time, and is
only revealed as the structures of internal relations and patterns or
medLation within a series of episodes are established. Within this
particular episode the opposition is between puja and non-puja, a
structurally ordered contradiction which is then mediated by devotion.
What devotion does is to transform a hunter into a saint, a saint who
31
attains release (cuvarkkam) and who is clearly identified with the
Kannapan of the Periyapurinam, wherein he is canonized as a saint in a
.. -
great tradition text and because of which he is worshipped and praised
in temples throughout Tamil Natu. But the further dimensions of the
transformation within the total structure of the text only become
apparent in the next episode.
The story of rendered here is a modified version of
the story of Tirumankai Alvir, one of the best known and most prolific
of medieval Tamil Vaisnavite bhakti saints and poets. His best known
work is the Periyattirumoli. The legendary account of his life
30
is
very colorful, as well as of great interest in calculating the ethical
content of bhakti. He was born a Kallar. and a Saivite. and was
caLled by the name He was given lands and was made a commander
in the army by the Cola king. He then fell in love with the maiden
who was a great devotee of Visnu, and to win her hand he
became a bhakta of Visnu and pledged to feed 1008 Vaisnavite bhaktas
everyday. To do this he was led to defraud the King, who imprisoned
him, though he was subsequently saved from prison by Visnu. But to
continue to feed the bhaktas he turned to highway robbery, which
provided him with the resources to do the above and to enlarge the
Srlrankam temple. He was said to have stolen the large golden image
of the Buddha in to defray these expenses. Finally, he
set upon and robbed a wealthy Brahman, who turned out to be Visnu
himself. Visnu then taught him the all-powerful mantra which led to
his enlightenment.
32
In the vamcavali the earlier parts of this legend are left
out, and the story begins with desire to renovate the
SrIrankam temple. One can only speculate about the principles of
)
selection, but they seem to be correlated with the apparent intent
behind the incorporation of this bhakti story which was to connect the
mediational and incorporative effects of bhakti, already established
in the previous episode, with temple worship, something at which the
Maravar family had yet to demonstrate its adeptness and fitness. The
vamcavali obviously leaves out the designation of Kallar caste to the
.
hero, though the choice of story suggests little embarassment about
one of the Kallar's traditional occupations, highway robbery
..
(valipparikkam). Of course, the purpose of highway robber is the
exalted one of renovating the temple (tiruppani). And, SrI
Rankanatar. or Visnu, does not seem to disapprove, for he takes on a
disguise so that he is the one robbed in both the vamcavali and the
traditional accounts. But he allows himself to be robbed only in the
end to arrange for the enlightenment of his great devotee.
Interestingly, in the vamcavali the mode of enlightenment is not a
mantra but the contact of tongue with Rankanatar's holy foot
(tirupatam); the motif in sharp and direct contrast with the
previous episode is again one in which the relation between deity
and devotee is depicted by the contact of head and foot. While
Tinnan's devotion offsets the literal subordination of the deity's
head to his foot, it is the literal touching of tongue to
the deity's foot here which is the final action. Both stories stress
devotion, but the contrast ot the two stories is striking indeed in
33
their final images, and the movement towards the increased ritualism
of temple worship in the earlier part of the story is neatly
encapsulated here.
So, while this episode is repetitive in some respects -- yet
another incorporative use for instance of well-known Tamil bhakti
traditions and another demonstration of the devotion of these
illustrious Ma!avar forbears -- two transformations occur. First, the
Uttumalai Ma!AVarS become Vaisnavites. Second, and more importantly.
we move from a scene in which puja is neither properly known nor
patronized in the form ot temple endowments to a scene in which these
Ma!avars are massively endowing one of the most important Tamil
Vaisnavite temples. The complexity of this transformation is
underscored. however, by the means used to procure resourceS for this
temple endowment, namely, highway robbery. Highway robbery is not
only unorthodox behavior which within this text will soon be seen to
be highly destructive of the social order, but even stoops to
robbing and assaulting Brahmans, a heinous sin. While in the previous
episode the structural contradiction between socially and ritually
sanctioned behavior and its opposite took the form of agamic puja and
peculiar n1vetanams, in this episode the contradiction is
between the exalted end of tiruppani and the dubious and dangerous
means ot valippa!ikkam. The coordinates of these transformations thus
establish baselines for subsequent transformations; whereas the
procedures for puja are violated in one episode, in the next they are
not only upheld but endowed; whereas highway robbery is the means of
this endowment in one episode. so shall we see highway robbery take on
34
a special, though quite different, role in a moment. But for both of
the episodes we have examined so far, borrowed as they are from great
bhakti traditions, devotion is the mechanism of transformation. In
the story of however, the end-point of transformation is not
simply a jungly saint, but one who achieves enlightenment through a
metaphorized enactment of puja (the tirupitam at the end) and whose
devotion leads him to make great gifts to the Srirankam temple. As
such Tirumankai is both associated with the great tradition of a major
temple center and with kingship, for the granting of great gifts to
temples is something done by Kings.
In the next episode the highway robbers are no longer the
heroes but the enemies of the heroes, and the vehicle by which yet
another transformation occurs. In the previous episode the Maravars
made the transition from jungly saints to kingly saints who also
happened to be robbers; now they become little kings who enter into a
series of relations with great kings a pattern which takes hold for
the rest ot the text -- by virtue of their subduing a band of country
robbers (cImaikkallars) who were terrorizing (calliyanceyt;rkal) the
countryside. This event was quickly subordinated to its result, which
is that the Maravar is summoned to the court of the king,
representative of one of the three great Tamil Kingships. The
Pintiyans ruled from over the Tamil area south of the river
..
Vell;r all the way down to Kanyakumari both in the Cankam era and
later, after they conquered the Colas, from the twelfth to the
fourteenth centuries (and even somewhat later from the small capital
of Tenkaci). At this P;ntiyan court, where as we might remember from
35
the tirst episode the Ma!avars made their first appearance, the
Ma!avar was congratulated and given titles, emblems, and rights over
land. The title was the own name,
and thus represented both the establishment of a special bond and the
grant by the King of part of his own substance, or persona, to the
Ma!svar. As emblems, the gave the Ma!avsr a pair of fly
whisks (upayacamaram) -- general symbols of kingship -- and three
banners on which were imprinted the emblems of Indra (valarikkoti),
king of the gods, and of the Cola and
(makarakkoti) dynssties, the two most important Tamil dynasties of the
medieval period. The land the Ma!avar was given was the very land
where the highway robbers who had been subdued had lived, and this
land was given as a means the title or
right to a pa;aiyam. The word means army, war-camp,
or a village surrounded by hillocks.
31
Palaiyam of course is the base
from which we get pa;aiyakarar, one who rules over a
The word in Tamil which means both title, and emblem, is
virutu (otherwise spelled pirutu). In Tamil, virutu means "title,
banner, trophy, badge of victory, pedigree, genealogy." Other
Dravidian cognates include more glosses such as panegryic, praise,
power, and valor. It seems, according to Monier-Williams, to be a
Dravidian word, but it has been borrowed by Sanskrit in the form of
birada or biruda, a "wrong reading" for vi-ruda. Monier-Williams
detines the term as a "panegryic to a raja in both prose and verse,"
and in the form of virudadhvaia it signifies a royal banner. Not only
are the king's emblems signs of his own sovereignty, but their
36
presentation to lesser kings or nobles marks and establishes a special
,relationship, a substantial bond. The bestowal of emblems and titles,
titles which sometimes describe the heroic action performed in the
service or the king and which are often one or more of the king's own
titles, has the symbolic effect of sharing part of the sovereignty of
the king with one ot his subjects. The subsequent acceptance of these
emblems completes the act of service/worship and serves to acknowledge
that it is a great honor for the recipient to share, as a subordinate,
part of the king's own royalty. Through this transaction, thus, the
king not only shares part ot his sovereign substance, but incorporates
the "servant" into his own sovereignty, or lordship.
We see thus that these emblems, the title, and the rulership
over the were all given by the king and thus
represent both the newly constituted kingship of Marutappa Tevar and
the fact that this kingship is something constituted by and in
relation to the Pantiyan king. The vamcavalis all make it clear that
honors and emblems are only meaningful when given by a superior, a
king or a deity. Thus, honors must not only be identified in
relational terms, these relations are necessarily hierarchical.
Similarly, the heroic actions of the must be
symbolically encoded in this hierarchical world; the subduing of a
elephant or of highway robbers takes on special meaning in these
texts only when honors are conferred by superior kings as a result of
these actions. The relationship is always one of periphery to center,
and of part to whole; the periphery (palaiyakarars) is always oriented
to the center (great kings), even as the metonymic part (emblems) only
37
derives meaning from its relation to the whole (the sovereignty, and
the full set ot emblems, of a great king).
Having witnessed the incipient structuring of hierarchical
relations in south Indian political discourse, the next episode seems
somewhat curious, for the Ma!avar kings now refuse a marriage alliance
not only with a series ot unnamed kings (these kings all waged war and
they were all defeated, their elephants, horses, weapons, titles,
banners, and crowns were all seized) but with the Pantiyan king as
well. And yet this story demonstrates the hierarchical and metonymic
nature ot honors and emblems in a particularly vivid passage. The
request of the king for the hand of a Ma!avar girl whose
beauty is renowned is met with this bold saying (cribbed, it turns
out, from Tamil literary sources):32
The fates ot other kings who have made such an offer are
well known. If you do not know this, you can see that we
Maravars have captured their weapons and keep them on the
outskirts of our country, their crownS are being looked
after, their possessions are used as borders in
decorating the roofs of our houses, and their umbrellas
are folded and kept aside. Do you really hope to get a
girl from such a Maravar family for the royal wedding?
Hierarchical relations are established and represented symbolically
through these emblems; thus the way of saying that one king has
subdued another is to say that he has captured their emblems, not
their lands, and this conquest is boldly displayed. Indeed, the
emblems are made to embellish one's own kingship, even as they are
degraded and made to represent the loss of another's power. This form
of symbolic conquest and metonymic domination has had a regular role
in south Indian history. When Sundara I (1216-
38
1268) defeated the Cola king, he "seized his crown of fine gold, and
was pleased to give it to the Bana,,,33 thus displaying not only his
conquest of the throne but metonymically appropriating it by
using the crown as one emblem among others that he could present to a
subordinate king.
But in the vamcavali there is only a show of bravado when the
MaEavar is confronted with the While the MaEavars clearly
establiSh their superiority in relations with other kings, they only
vaguely refer to a war with the a reference which again is
only vaguely related to their move to the north. When this story is
repeated in the vamciva!i of another Ma!avar family,
which claimed to have been at this point undivided from the Uttumalai
branch, the request is refused but it is specifically
stated that the Ma!avars feel it would not be right (or just
niyiyamalla) to fight against the and so leave the country
34
before any battle can take place.
The Uttumalai vamcavali proceeds at this point to relate
.
another episode in which the Ma!avars subdue a group of forest
dwellers who had been causing trouble along the roads of the northern
land to which they had migrated, in recognition of which they are
summoned to court by the "camastanam", which though unidentified must
refer to Vijayanagara, and presented with emblems, land as a
and a title. This short episode, largely repetitive but
suggestive of the establishment of royal relations with Vijayanagara,
also renders their move to the north meaningful in terms other than
retreat. The genealogical succession which follows hereafter is
39
threatened by a king who has no issue. This predicament is solved
through the intercession of Venkateswarar, a form of Visnu around whom
one of the grandest Vaisnavite temple traditions in all of south
India, at Tiruppati, was established under the patronage of
Vijayanagara. This intercession further establishes a second
relationship for the Ma!avars in the northern country, thus providing
a dual axis of the sort that had initially been set up with the
and with mnakshi in the far south at the beginning of the
text. These relations established, however, the Ma!avars then move
back to the south, and on their way kill a group of "country Kallars"
(niittukkallars -- also suggests that these Kallars are raw, or
untransformed) who attacked them. This encounter serves to
reestablish a relationship with the for they are invited to
the court in recognition of this feat, the former problems
apparently totally forgotten. At this point the court is no longer in
Maturai, but has Shifted to and so we know that this
was the period of the last phase of Pantiyan rule, when the then five
..
had been pushed south of Naturai to the
Tenkiici region, sometime probably during the fourteenth or fifteenth
century.
On this visit to court, Marutappa Tevar is given no honors;
rather, he is told that if he can subdue the troublesome Ku!umpars of
the countryside around he will be given their country
as his own palaiyapattu. The Ku!umpars were early inhabitants of
southern India; according to some accounts they came from Karnataka
and settled in Tamil areas in the first millenium A.D.
35
They were a
40
group with military power, and were said to have built many sturdy
forts. They are usually said to have settled principally in
Tontaimantalam, where for instance they set up the twenty-four forts
and domains which traditionally constituted and divided that country,
and where they were subdued by Cola, a traditional king whose
legendary settlement of Tontaimantalam and designation as progenitor
of the Pallava dynasty is directly associated with his vanquishing of
the Ku!umpars and his subsequent clearing of the forests in which they
had dwelt.
36
In traditional accounts the KUEumpars are also said to
have been traditional enemies ot the and the as well
as caste enemies of the Mutaliars and Vellalars, castes associated
with agricultural settlements in the cultural centers of Tamil Natu.
37
Whether or not these traditional accounts provided a model for this
section ot the the request of the king that the
Ma!avars defeat the Ku!umpars both reassociates the Ma!avars with the
and establishes a basis for their acquisition of settled
land rights in southern Tamil Natu in a way reminiscent of the origin
myths or the most conspicuous Tamil cultivating castes and of the
kings with whom these castes were aligned. Indeed, as soon as the
Kurumpars are deteated, the Maravars go to their new pa!aiyapa::u.
called Uttumalai, and clear the jungles and build a fort, having been
accorded great honors and given many gifts (apimaEamay aEeka
mariyataiyunceytu vekumatikalun ceytu).
In the next episode, Marutappa Tevar goes to the Navarattiri
Kolu festival of the SrI Vallapa Maharaja. The Navarattiri festival
(meaning the festival of the nine nights) is coincident with and part
41
of the Dasara or Mahanavami festival. By the time of Vijayanagara
rule, at least, Mahanavami had become the most important festival for
kings in southern India. The festival, in all its forms, was
celebrated on the first nine nights and ten days of the lunar month
Asvina, which roughly corresponds to the period from mid-September to
mid-October, alerting us that the festival was a harvest festival in
those areas of India influenced by the southwest monsoon. As one more
of the names of the festival, Durgapuja. readily suggests, the ritual
occasion consisted basically of the worship of the goddess Durga.
although in later and variant forms the worship of other goddesses,
often tutelary, also took place.
According to the Devipurana. the purposes and objects of this
festival were rather all-encompassing;38
This is a great and holy vrata conferring great siddhis,
vanquishing all enemies, conferring benefits on all
people, especially in great floods; this should be
performed by Brahmanas for solemn sacrifices and by
ksatriyas for the of the people, by vaisyas
for cattle wealth, by Sudras desirous of sons and
happiness, by women for blessed wifehood and by rich men
who hanker for more wealth.
A great variety of puja rites characterized the performance of the
Durgotsava; one striking feature of the textual prescription was the
sacrifice ot animals, particularly goats and buffaloes. In addition,
animals figured in the ritual in that kings and others who kept horses
were advised to honor horses from the second to the ninth days, in
ways reminiscent of all but the culminating features of the Vedic
horse sacrifice, the asvamedha.
39
Each day had particular rites
associated with it, as well as certain ubiquitous features such as the
42
worship of Durga (or the goddess) and extravagant gifts to Brahmans
and others. The n1nth day in particular became know as Ayuta puja, in
which, in conjunction with the worship of the goddess Sarasvati, the
implements of one's profession -- horses and weapons for warriors,
tools for workmen, ploughs for cultivators, books for scholars -- were
worshipped. Ayutam itself means weapon or arms, thus suggesting the
possible military etymology of this rite, an etymology all the more
convincing because of the specific associations of the final day with
and military victory.
The tenth day, called Vijayadasami, was the day on which the
festival as it was performed by the kings of Vijayanagara culminated.
Indeed, according to Kane.
40
Vijayadasami, or dasara, was a great day
for all people of all castes, but was especially a day for
nobles, and kings. On this day there was a procession to a place of
worship, for the king a place outside his palace. The royal priest
(purohita) was to accompany the king, all the while reciting verses
about the victory of the king in the quarters; and the king was to
honor worthy Brahmans, the astrologer, and the purohita, as well as to
"arrange sports of elephants, horses, and footsoldiers.,,41 After the
worShip ot the goddess, arrows were to be shot off in the presence
the king signifying the victory of the gods over the asuras, and more
specifically the defeat by Durga of the buffalo demon, Mahisasura.
When the king reentered his palace his entire retinue was to shout
"jaya," meaning victory, and lights were to be waved before him by
courtesans. According to Kane the king who performed this auspicious
ceremony every year was to secure long life, health, prosperity, and
43
victory; and no king who did not celebrate Vijayadasami could
anticipate victory within the year.
The political and cosmo-moral centrality of Vijayanagara for
late medieval south India led to the proliferation of perfornlances of
Mahanavami in the larger little kingdoms; the Nayakas performed it in
Maturai, the Cetupatis performed it in Ramanatapuram. and claimed
indeed that this mandate of sovereignty had been awarded them by the
Maturai Nayakas, and the Tontaimans performed it somewhat later in
In Uttumalai, interestingly enough, it was never
performed on a very grand scale; instead, the festival
took its place as the principal state festival. This took place on
the first ten days of Pankuni month, roughly the same as
February/March, and as a harvest festival actually corresponded better
to the climatic cycle of the northeast monsoon. on which the Andhra
and Tamil countries depend for their major rains. But perhaps the
most significant reason for the difference was that the deity
worshipped in Navarattiri or Dasara was Durga. or some other, usually
Saivite, form of the goddess, whereas the tutelary deity of the
Uttumalai family was NavanIttakirusna.
In any case, in the Uttumalai vamcavali the Ma!avars went to a
Navaratt1ri festival which was put on by SrI Vallapa Maharaja. This
Maharaja's festival. in common with the general description above, was
renowned for its athletic and agonistic events. in particular for its
wrestling matches and animal fights. and the contest of royal
elephants provides the occasion for Marutappa Tevar's display of his
bravery and sKill. He tames an elephant that has run amuck, and then
44
he is honored by being mounted on the tamed elephant and provided with
many emblems and honors, and a title proclaiming his subjugation of
the elephant. Elephants are a symbol of royalty, and are the usual
vehicles ot south Indian kings, and their importance was already seen
in the Tontaiman vamcavali. In this instance the subduing of the
elephant has much the same consequences for Marutappa Tevar as it had
for the Tontaiman, and we see a further progression in his attainment
of kingly appropriateness and power.
Indeed, it is therefore not surprising that one of the first
acts of Marutappa Tevar after this is to establish a landed settlement
for Brahmans (akkirakaram) and to build a temple for these Brahmans.
These are two of the primary signs of kingship, and indeed it is
munificence to Brahmans and temples which not only enhances royal
authority but in south Indian history has been absolutely central to
its cultural constitution. In the case of the Uttuma1ai
this action represents the appropriation of not only
the but the actions of Brahmanic kingship. Of course, they are
still not universal kings. Embedded within this narrative is the
relatively brief comment that power in Maturai passed from the
to the Nayakas, who summon Marutappa Tevar to assist them in
the protection ot their fort in Maturai. This event takes on greater
significance in other vamcavalis, where the incorporation of the
southern as protectors of the seventy-two bastions of
the Nayaka fort is a major event and becomes the central metaphor for
the reconstitution of the late medieval southern Tamil political
order. This will be talked about further when we consider the
45
chronicle of the Maturai Nayakas.
The next episode in the vamcavali demonstrates even more
clearly the continued participation of the Maravars in a hierarchical
system or relations, one in which they still look up. The Nayakas
build an akkirakaram which is then destroyed by certain "criminals."
Marutappa Tevar arrives on the scene and captures this outrageous lot.
As a result of this, the Nayaka honors him and gives him emblems as
well as a gift ot land on half assessment (arttakkanikkai).
Interestingly, much greater emphasis is given to this in the narrative
than to their own establishment of a Brahman settlement; thus
protecting the royal akkirakaram still brings more honor than
establisning one for oneself, if, that is, relative emphasis in the
text can be used as an index of this.
After this, the Muslim rulers take over the southern Tamil
country, and the Ma!avars are as helpful and submissive (the sense of
loyalty is usually conveyed through words more properly suggest
submissiveness) to them as they had been to previous kings, and they
are awarded emblems and honors by Makammatu Yicumukan (Muhammed Yusuf
Khan) in recognition of their service to him. Among other things, the
Ma!avar helped the Muslim ruler bring under control those who were
causing trouble (tusattanam). those who were not submissive
.
(kilppatintu natavamal). and those who were not paying their tribute
. .
At that time, the text tells us, there was anarchy
(arajika; i.e. no kingly authority) in the Tirunelveli country, and
,
Mukammatu called Marutappa Tevar and gave him two thousand men and
told him to bring order in the area. Marutappa Tevar did accordingly,
46
and was congratulated and told that he should likewise perform
carefully "the work of the palace" (intappati aranmanaikkariyattil
jakkirataiyaka and do what he is asked, thus
suggesting a bit more concern than before with specified and
regularized forms of command.
The final transition of political power comes when the British
supplant the Muslims as the regional rulers. But even here, the story
is continuous. Again, the Ma!avars are of service to the great kings,
and again, they are given gifts and honors by them. There has been
one s1gnificant shift, however, which began under the Muslims, and
this is the new concern of the ruling powers with taxes. One of the
ways in which the pa!aiyakarar assists the Muslim ruler is to bring
under control those who do not pay taxes; and under the British the
Ma!avars are engaged in collecting taxes from recalcitrant
palaiyakarars. Thus. while political relations with the Muslims and
the British continue to be defined by services performed for kings and
the recognition of these deeds in the form of the presentation of
honors, the sudden importance of taxes signals a new element in the
political system. The introduction of the tax as a significant item
of political currency comes with the Muslims and the British in the
eighteenth century, and yet it is not associated with the
disappearance of honors and gifts. In this latter regard, the
Honorable Company awards the Ma!avar with a palanquin, a
horse, and a green umbrella. Well they should have, for as the
vamcava!i announces, "we have severed the heads of bulls belonging to
our neighboring enemies."
47
Conclusion: Gift. Service. and Narrative
in a South Indian Little Kingdom
As is true in the other vamcavalis as well, the central events
of these texts are the presentations of honors and the actions which
lead up to these presentations. The episodes seem as a result often
repetitive (less so in this than in most other such texts), but each
episode is at the same time part of a narrative flow which advances
the story in structural sequences. Within each episode, the
contradictions between order and disorder, field and forest, and
center and periphery are mediated by service, actions that is which
merit the recognition of the king and which result in the central
transformative events of the texts, the gifts. Looking at this text
as a whole, we see the transitions from tribal chief to saint and then
from highway robber to saint followed by a series of transformations
through which saints become little kings of increasing conformance to
Brahmanic and sastraic canons of kingship. Even so, the little kings
never become universal kings; their being and the significance of
their actions are always constituted in reference (and in direct
relationship) to one of a series of superior kings, the transactions
with whom form the key events ot the narrative.
Perhaps the key hermeneutical conclusion of this study is that
while the meaning of the text can be to Some degree decoded by
attending to what structuralists would call a structure of oppositions
and mediations, the relations established by these oppositions and
medLations cannot be arbitrarily shuffled to attain some deeper
structuralist insight. In fact, the relations take on their meaning
48
in terms of what might be called a narrative logic, or structure. in
the text. Levi-Strauss can be read instructively by historians
who deal with ethnohistorical texts of this sort, historians (and
indeed, I would contend, anthropologists too) must not heed Levi-
Strauss' advice to reorganize "our myth according to a time referent
of a new nature. namely a two-dimensional time referent which is
simultaneously diachronic and synchronic, and which accordingly
integrates the characteristics of langue on the one hand, and those of
42
parole on the other." Levi-Strauss succeeds only in subordinating
parole to langue (the former, for Saussure, being non-reversible time
and the latter being reversible) where for ethnohistorical texts the
parole is the narrative structure. and for that matter the entire
sense of time. constituted by the text itself. Therefore, parole
that is, the narrative structure -- must be identified and preserved
(for it is irreducible as well as irreversible) as the basis for all
the transformations which occur within the text. In our attempt to
preserve parole here, we have noted a distinct progression in the self
image ot the Ma!avars a progressive refinement -- and we have
both the importance of gifts and of services in our text:
indeed, we have delineated the ways in which particular services and
particular gifts were emplotted in a larger narrative frame. This
narrative frame then provides the necessary interpretive framework for
understanding the meaning of the transformations we have witnessed.
So, to summarize, we have seen that gifts of emblems, titles,
and land are not only the central points of each narrative episode,
they are central events in that they constitute the relationship of
49
the chief and the king, and in that they transform the chief by adding
to his persona those rights and privileges which are so fundamental to
the cultural definition of authority. But these gifts, however
"freely given" they are (i.e., given out of the favor or grace of the
king, and indeed the texts never suggest that the king has any
obligation to give any of these gifts), always follow some manner of
"service", which really means (as for example in the case of the word
pani) worshipful action performed both to demonstrate submission to
the authority of the great king and to display this submission in the
form ot some heroic action in honor of the great king. The concepts of
loyalty and service are thus actually combined in this more general
notion ot submission, which in the form of some act, gesture, or
statement seems always to set in motion the kinds of '''political''
relationships we observe in these texts.
Other Similar texts enable us to understand somewhat better
the meaning of service offered to great kings by little kings and of
gifts proferred by great kings to little kings, but an examination of
them would be beyond the scope of a single paper. The purpose of the
present paper was less to provide a full statement of the cultural
content ot these texts than to suggest the historiographical
possibilities inherent in a sustained analysis of texts of this sort.
Thus, there is much to be learned from this text both about
the way the past is conceptualized, and about the units of the past
which are privileged in an ethnohistorical account and therefore must,
at least to Borne extent, be taken very seriously when the outside
historian would attempt his own historical reconstruction. In this
50
paper I have only been able to hint at the way this might be done,
though I have been able to show the interpenetration of different
modes of analysis with the study of a single text, a text which,
incidently, is of a genre which has been virtually totally neglected
by south Indian historians. This neglect stands in marked contrast to
the overwhelming importance granted to inscriptions, which are often
used in such a way. for example by dating them and working them into
chronological order, as to correlate with Western notions of time. In
our enthusiasm for reconstructing the history of an area which seems
to have had no prior history, we are often far too unaware of the
fundamental question behind our stated objectives: whose history are
we really constructing1
51
FOOTNOTES
1. E.g., R. Hardgrave, The Nadars of Tamilnad: The Political
Culture of a Community in Change (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1969); F. Conlon, A Caste in a Changing World:
The Chitrapur Saraswat Brahmans. 1700-1935 (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1977); K. Leonard, Social History of an
Indian Caste (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978);
R. lnden, Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1976).
2. One s1gnificant departure from this approach is found in lnden's
book on the caste histories of Kayasthas and Brahmans in Bengal.
While recognizing that some of the caste histories be used were
clearly propagandistic, and that many others produced in the late
nineteenth century owed their form to the census, lnden used the
"cultural categories" in these histories and genealogies as the
"categories oj: social historical analysis." (p. 1). The results
of his inquiry were astonishingly interesting and useful for
understanding the very nature and dynamic structure of the caste
system.
3. J. Vansina, Oral Tradition: A study in Historical Methodology
(Chicago: Aldine, 1961).
52
4. See the review of the historiographical literature in
S. Errington, "Style in the Meanings of the Past," The Journal of
Asian Studies, vol. 38, no. 2 (February 1979).
5. See Sir Richard Winstedt, A History of Classical Malay Literature
(Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1969).
6. J. Siegal, Shadow and Sound: The Historical Thought of a
Sumatran People (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979),
p. 16.
7. Errington. p. 232.
8. Errington, p. 242.
9. Perhaps most notably in the work of H. White, Metahistory: The
Historical Imagination in Nineteenth Century Europe (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973).
10. M. 1. Finley, "Myth, Memory, and History," History and Theory
(1965),5:282.
11. Finley, p. 283.
12. B. S. Cohn, "History and Anthropology: Towards a Rapprochement,"
paper prepared for the Conference on "History in the 1980s"
(June 15-19, 1980), p. 59.
13. William Sewell. Work and Revolution in France (Cambridge:
University of Cambridge Press, 1981), p. 9.
53
14. My sense of the problematic here was influenced by the work of
Siegal, who says about his own study of Sumatran historical
thought: "My analysis of the texts is an attempt to shift the
concerns or the text into a vocabulary familiar to readers of
English. I do not. however, claim either to have succeeded in
freeing myself of a metalanguage or to say that my interest stops
there. For it is also my wish to point out the Atjehnese
interest in literature, to say myself with the Dutch, however
narrowly."
15. See my, "The Structure and Meaning of Political Relations in a
South Indian Little Kingdom." Contributions to Indian Sociology,
No.2 (1979), 13:169-205.
16. H. H. Wilson, Mackenzie Collection: A Descriptive Catelogue
(Calcutta, 1828). p. 2.
17. Wilson, p. xi.
18. India Office Library Records, Mackenzie Collections, Unbound
Translations, Class XII (hereafter, Unbound Translations, Class
XII).
19. Wilson, p. 428.
20. Madras Journal of Science and Literature, vol. 6, p. 149.
21. India Office Library Records, Mackenzie Manuscripts, General,
vol. 4 (See India Office Library Index, Mackenzie Collections,
p. 49).
54
22. Census and Dehazada of the Province of Tirunelvelie, Revenue
Department Sundrie, no. 39, Tamil Nadu Archives.
23. Mackenzie Manuscripts, no. D.3583, Government Oriental
Manuscripts Library, Madras.
24. Both passages are quoted in V. Kanakasabhai, The Tamils Eighteen
Hundred Years Ago (Tinnevelly: The South India Saiva Siddhanta
Works Publishing Society, 1965), pp. 42, 43.
25. In Selections from Old Records: Papers Relating to the Poligar
Wars, Tamil Nadu Archives, ASO(D) 338.
26. See A. Appadurai, "Right and Left Hand Castes in South India,"
The Indian Economic and Social History Review, vol. 11 (June-
September 1974); B. E. F. Beck, Peasant Society in Konu
(Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 1972); and B. Stein,
Peasant State and Society in Medieval South India (Delhi: Oxford
University Press, 1980), chapter 5.
27. R. Inden, "Ritual, Authority and Cyclic Time in Hindu Kingship,"
in J. F. Richards, ed., Kingship and Authority in South Asia
(Madison: University of Wisconsin Publication Series, 1978),
pp. 36, 37. For a detailed account of the practice of puja in a
south Indian temple see C. A. Breckenridge, The SrI Minaksi
Sundaresvarar Temple: Worship and Endowments in South India.
1833 to 1925, Ph.D. Thesis, University of Wisconsin, Department
of History, 1976).
55
28. Inden, p. 37.
29. A. K. Ramanujan, Speaking of Siva (Baltimore: Penquin Books,
1973)
30. Given in Swami Shuddananda Bharati's Alvar Saints
(Ramachandrapuram. Trichy District: Anpu Nilayam Publishers,
1942); and in K. Zvelebil, Tamil Literature (Leiden/Koln:
E. J. Brill, 1975), pp. 159, 160.
31. Tamil Lexicon (Madras: University of Madras), p.2638.
32. See Maturaikkalampakam (Madras: Saiva Siddhanta Ka;akam, 1968);
and Tiravankakalampakam (Madras: S. Rajam Publishers, 1957).
33. K. A. Ni1akanta Sastri, The Colas (Madras: The University of
Madras, 1975), p. 394.
34. Naturakkuricci Pa;aiyakkaran Vamcavali, Madras: Government
Oriental Manuscript Library, D.3586.
35. "Account ot and its Ancient Inhabitants, Vetars
and KUfumpars, Their Customs, etc.," in Wilson, p. 423; and in
T. V. Mahalingam, ed., Mackenzie Manuscript, 2 vols. (Madras:
The University of Madras, 1972). 1:96.
36. "Account ot Kandava Rayan and Setu Rayam who Ruled from the Fort
of Tiruvitaiccuram in the Arcot Forest." in Mahalingam, 1: 94.
37. See 1:96; also see Rev. W. Taylor, A Catelogue
Raisonee of Oriental Manuscripts in the Library of the (late)
College. Ft. St. George (Madras, 1858), in particular "Account of
the Curumbars," sec. 10, no. 828, p. 420.
38. P. V. Kane, History of Dharmasastra, 5 vols. (Pooua: Bhandarkar
Research Institute, 1974), 5:156.
39. Namely, the circumambulation of the territory of the kingdom by
the horse and then the ritual sacrifice of the horse. See
Satapatha Brahmana, vol. 13.
40. Kane, p. 190.
41. Kane, p. 191.
42. Claude Levi-Strauss, Structural Anthropology (New York: Anchor
Books, 1967), pp. 206-207. Also, for a far more sophisticated
argument which makes a number of related points, see Terence
Turner, "Narrative Structure and Mythopoesis: A Critique and
Reformulation of Structuralist Concepts of Myth, Narrative, and
Poetics," Arethusa, no. 1 (Spring 1977). 10:103-163.
57